Monday, January 21, 2013

Polio Virus Detected By Environmental Surveillance In Egypt

Earlier today a media story of Polio being discovered in Egypt (which has been free of the disease since 2004) began began circulating via several Middle Eastern sources. I’ve held off reporting this until I could find a second source (see below).

First the original report from Pakistan Today. What wasn’t immediately clear from this report is whether any actual polio infections have been identified in Egypt (they apparently haven’t):

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani health officials on Monday called for infants leaving the country to be issued polio vaccinations at airports after virus samples linked to a southern Pakistani city were discovered in Egypt.

Two sewage samples from Cairo were analysed and found to resemble a recently discovered strain in the city of Sukkur, a joint statement by health officials, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef said.

Sampling of sewage samples for the poliovirus has increasingly become part of the surveillance effort on polio, since only 1 personin 100 who becomes infected actually develops the acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) we normally associate with the disease.

Everyone who is infected, however, sheds large quantities of the virus in their feces for weeks, making environmental sampling of sewage an efficient method of determining the presence of the virus in the community.